


Double Negatives

by MonkeyMindScream



Series: Rare Pair Week 2019 [5]
Category: Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!
Genre: Depression too, Descriptions of Blood, F/M, but what can I say they deserve it, it's Mandarin and Valina what did you expect, low self-esteem on both sides, mild violence, verbally tearing each other down, which honestly there's more of than either of these characters would ever willingly indulge in, ya gotta muscle through the ugly bits to get to the fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 18:44:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20440742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonkeyMindScream/pseuds/MonkeyMindScream
Summary: Day 5: SummerValina inadvertently discovers a loophole that saves her from Skeleton King's attempt to destroy her (almost to her express dismay). Mandarin, after the war's end, finds himself with nowhere else to go, and becomes her reluctant company.It's not a situation either of them particularly relishes, but they really ought to be used to that kind of thing by now.





	1. Before Summer

**Author's Note:**

> *holds this fic aloft like Simba from the Lion King, screeching like a barbarian* IIIIII WROTE THIS WHOLE THING THIS MOOOOONTH!! I KNOW IT'S NOT MUCH BUT IT'S MY PERSONAL BEST SO LET ME CELEBRAAAATE!!

_light burning agony why why why blackness_

_*_

_*_

_*_

_*_

_* _

_b l a c k n e s s_

_Blackness. Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe? Can’t see._

_Blackness, can’t see, can’t breathe._

_Can’t see can’t breathe can’t see can’t breathe **can’t breathe**_

_Up fight free up can’t breathe up up up up—_

Valina broke surface tension gasping and choking.

* * *

She had claws now.

She was laying on her side, looking at her hands. She’d never made a habit of keeping her nails long. They always broke too easily to be of any real advantage in a fight, and more often than not they just got in the way of things. She didn’t have nails anymore, long or short. Her fingers became harder the longer they extended, and ended in points.

Her skin was discolored, too. It was dark like pitch.

What had her master done to her?

There’d been blinding, burning pain. She’d felt her muscles fry and sizzle and her eyes melt. That hadn’t been a transformation. He hadn’t meant for this. This was accidental.

She could still cry, apparently.

She didn’t collapse into sobs like she would have expected to. Her eyes stung and her face crumpled as tears fell. And then she _laughed_.

Not hysterically. Not hard. Rather it was soft, sharp little breaths through her tears, a grin tearing at her face as her throat started to ache.

She’d been so stupid.

* * *

The animals of the Zone of Wasted years weren’t necessarily abundant, thanks to the large amount of formless and general level of corruption. The ones that _did_ live there were remarkably hardy, or at least larger than average.

The rat was the size of a terrier, with a longer snout and sharper teeth. It scuttled through the dense underbrush unhurriedly. It couldn’t hear any predators nearby, and though the area was saturated with the scent of formless, the ones that frequented around here were _massive, _and had they been around it _would _have heard them. Right now all it needed to concern itself with was scrounging up something for itself to eat.

There was a large rotting tree branch up ahead that seemed promising, so it shuffled over. Nosing it aside, it found an assortment of grubs and worms and ants. Tiny things, but food was food. It set about devouring the assorted selection.

Its head snapped up suddenly, ears swiveling. It thought it had heard something rustling in the brush just beyond where it could see.

It listened. It waited. It heard nothing further besides the ambient sounds of the jungle around it.

It slowly put its head back down, returning its attention to its meal.

And then it was sent smashing into the ground, throat torn clean out before it could do more than give a shrill squeal in surprise. Valina crouched on top of its body, claws stained red. She shifted, rolled it slightly so she had better access to its belly, then ripped that open too. She took a fistful of what spilled out and brought it to her mouth, ripping and tearing with her teeth.

Meat really did taste better cooked, she reflected. But the energy it would take to haul her kill back to her temple, prepare a fire, and then wait for it to heat through wasn’t energy she felt she had to spare, so she didn’t bother. She could eat raw meat without problems now; it had been a few years and it hadn’t made her sick even once. She might as well capitalize on that. And anyway, even if it would have tasted better cooked, she didn’t expect she’d really enjoy it much at this point.

She hunted and ate because of survival instincts, not an actual desire to eat or a legitimate will to live (as pathetic as that made her). She almost wouldn’t bother with it at all, instincts be damned, but that too seemed pointless. Being reduced to _ash_ hadn’t been enough to kill her, what were the odds something as plebian as starvation would? All she’d really manage with _that_ would be making herself uncomfortable.

She had theories – however hard she tried to ignore her entire situation – about why disintegration hadn’t killed her. When she’d first been given the realm to rule, she hadn’t been able to leave. She’d been bound to the temple she resided in by the very power she harnessed. It was, interestingly (or rather, _unfortunately_), a common set-back to possessing dark magics. The power was often potent enough where binding itself to a single individual could literally tear them apart, particularly as it adapted and strengthened. It was often why the wielders’ physical forms would twist and grow distorted the more powerful they became. Thus, the magic would instead attach itself to a _place_, which – though also prone to some forms of physical distortion – was much less likely to be ripped into nothingness. This rather obviously meant that for as long as someone was connected to the magic, they were rooted to the place it had attached itself to.

Valina, during her first confrontation with the Hyperforce, had fallen into a pool of formless ooze. This had resulted in the power attaching itself to _her, _and she’d apparently been wielding it long enough where she’d become capable of housing it with no physical detriments. She’d celebrated her newfound ability to travel by unleashing a plague of wraiths on Shuggazoom City.

Waking within the pool after her first “death” hadn’t even caught her notice; it was where she’d last been, after all. Waking in the pool the _second_ time had driven home the fact that, regardless of her ability to come and go as she pleased, she was evidently still in some way connected to the area.

She finished eating. With her stomach sated she turned and made her way back to her temple, movements somewhere between fluid and feral. The rest of the Zone’s beasts could squabble over her leftovers. She’d find something else to kill the next time she got hungry.

When she reached her base, she didn’t bother with the stairs. To be fair, she’d _never_ really bothered with the stairs; she had usually teleported in or out as needed, or if she felt like being _scenic_ she would float from place to place. Her body felt continually more inclined (and better adapted, to be honest) to twist and grip now, though, so she instead took advantage of _that_ and began scaling the nearest wall before slipping into the first hole she found.

As she entered her temple, something screamed deep within the jungle. It was the closest the Zone ever got to birdsong. She looked back out of the opening she’d just crawled through, and after a beat of silence she screamed back.

It was the closest she ever got to conversation.

* * *

The war was over. Evil had lost. Mandarin was on the run.

The master’s fortress had crumbled along with him. The Hyperforce was rounding up any enemies that hadn’t died in the fight. He needed somewhere to hide and regroup, if such a thing was even possible for him at this point. Anywhere within the city’s borders was obviously out, and the outskirts of it where not only lacking spots to hide but still felt too close for comfort.

However, he happened to know of a place that was a reasonably separated from the city, generally unknown to its populace, and a practical shelter besides. Granted, the memories of his time there were by no means _pleasant, _considering he had in fact been tortured there for several days, but regardless it remained the most tenable option at his disposal.

The witch’s old temple stood as derelict as he remembered it, and was fittingly, chillingly silent. Creeping through the cavernous stone halls made Mandarin shudder in spite of himself.

It had been a fairly short war, all things considered (he was reflecting now to distract himself from the unusual emptiness). It had only just fallen short of two years. Considering the planet had a history of wars lasting for _centuries _– to the point they could permanently scar the landscape they’d taken place on – it was the equivalent of a minor spat.

When looked at from an outsider’s perspective, anyway. Speaking as someone who’d actually fought in it, Mandarin could attest the war had felt _decades_ longer than it’d actually been.

He didn’t remember the layout of the temple as well as he would have liked, he realized. Admittedly, he hadn’t really been allotted much time to tour the premises before. There had been more pressing matters to attend to, and a shrieking witch demanding to get them done. He remembered Valina had booby-trapped the place to the Abyss and back, so he was moving slowly and carefully in hopes of avoiding _those_. In terms of the temple’s actual arrangement, however…

He continued on, carefully peeking into rooms – _after_ thoroughly checking the door frames; the last thing he needed was for something heavy or sharp to drop on his head – trying to find any distinguishing features he could later use to orient himself. Or, failing that, wherever the witch had been staying prior to her death. _Surely _if she’d been here for as long as she’d claimed, she would have fashioned some kind of living quarters for herself? He wasn’t exactly overeager to spend an extended length of time where Valina had lived and slept, but he also wasn’t eager to sleep on cold hard stone either. It was a matter of evils, unfortunately.

He turned a corner, and jolted so hard he was sent skittering back a few paces at what he saw.

It was a formless. One of the witch’s old brood, from the looks of it, the humanoid ones that had adapted to the Zone’s environment. Mandarin had never cared for those simply because of how _ugly_ they were. The ones personally created by the master had always looked more… _finished,_ in his opinion. The jungle formless looked like someone had cobbled together the first draft of something, then shrugged and called it good enough.

_This_ one, however, actually looked like perhaps the second or third draft of the same thought. Though its basic design and color scheme was the same, its silhouette was sleeker and more proportional than the bulbous, shambling bodies of its counterparts. From a distance he might have accidentally mistaken it for a human. _Strictly _from a distance, however, as apart from its shape the rest of it was as distinctly _in_human as any other formless. It had wicked claws and its body was inky black. Its face was pale as an aged skull, with large eyes drenched bloody red. 

The face _itself_, though, was unmistakable, altered though it was.

After the barest second more of incredulity, Mandarin sneered, puffing up as best he could. “You didn’t even have the sense to _die_, Witch?”

Valina, it would seem, had been taken just as off-guard by him as he’d been by her. Her surprise quickly dropped in favor of outrage as she processed what he’d said.

“_You_ couldn’t even die when you were _starving!_” she snarled.

“_Feh_,” he scoffed, crossing his arms dismissively. “I still had things I needed to do. What’s your excuse?”

She her lips curled back, baring her teeth as she seethed. He noticed, belatedly, that the witch’s claws and _mouth_ were coated in dried blood. That was… disconcerting…

“What are you doing here, Monkey?” she finally spat. Then, mockingly, “Don’t tell me you came all the way out here to mourn our time together?”

“Hardly!” he balked, bristling. “I assure you Witch, I wouldn’t have come anywhere _near_ here had I any other option!”

Valina’s ire dissipated somewhat. It was still clearly _there_, but apparently she’d had to make room to accommodate for curiosity. “And why is it you’re suddenly without options, Simian?”

Mandarin realized, likely far too late, that his plan to use the witch’s former base of operations as his own had just been made intensely improbable by the fact that it was _not_ her “former” base. It was still her _current_. She was, somehow, not dead. The only real reason they had tolerated each other before had been for their master’s benefit. Not only was the master no more (rather definitively this time), but he didn’t suspect that the witch would be too kindly disposed to either him or his servants at the moment.

But the fact remained that he had nowhere else to go, and in any case he couldn’t fathom brushing off the situation with a “I’ve made a slight miscalculation” and politely excusing himself. So he did the only thing he could think to do, and told the truth.

(It was a truth told through gritted teeth, but it was still told nonetheless.)

“The master waged war against the Hyperforce, and we lost,” he said candidly. “They’re searching for his surviving allies, and this was the best place I could think to evade them.”

For better or worse, he couldn’t stop himself from injecting a note of challenge into his words. _Go on. Throw me out. Make me leave. Just try it._

(She could do so with relative ease, he was sure, and if he lived to talk about it he was positive he’d be feeling it for months afterwards).

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected Valina’s reaction to be. Triumph that the master who’d thrown her away had been vanquished? Sorrow that the lord she’d worshipped for years had finally been permanently overthrown? Anger, because well honestly when _wasn’t_ she some variation of such?

Whatever he’d been expecting, stony silence hadn’t been on the roster. She stared at him, expression offering nothing more than muted, almost _indifferent_, disdain, before finally letting out a huff of air. Mandarin couldn’t tell if it had been meant in exasperation, disgust, or both.

“Stay out of my way, and don’t bother me,” she finally said coldly, continuing the way she’d been headed when they’d discovered each other.

Mandarin was left standing in the mouth of the stone hall, alone and distantly confused. As he watched her move farther down the perpendicular corridor from him, he realized that he still hadn’t a singular clue where he was inside the temple or where to go next. He grudgingly trailed after her, keeping his distance and otherwise trying not to draw her attention.


	2. First Month

The monkey had appeared approximately two weeks ago, and for the most part they’d done their respective best to ignore each other.

Valina had tried a few times to convince herself to simply kill him and get back to her solitude, but like with practically everything else in her life lately she couldn’t seem to muster up the drive to do so. She eventually conceded that this was in part because keeping the monkey around offered some small amusements from time to time, at least for now. Perhaps she’d revisit the idea of killing him once he got boring.

She’d taken to following him around the temple as he wandered through it, presumably trying to map it out in his head. A distant part of her reveled in how he was plainly none the wiser to being stalked. When he was deep enough, she would make tiny noises _just _beyond where he could see, and then watch him jump and become nervous. He didn’t put up as much of a front when he thought he was alone (there was _some_, but it wasn’t the condescending bravado he usually used), so the unease that crept across his expression was mostly unfiltered and free-flowing. She’d never known him to be so jittery. It was a delightful sight.

At one point she’d followed him for a good while before making any noise. Apparently emboldened by going so long without any strange sounds behind him, Mandarin ventured deeper into the temple than he ever had previously. When she saw a look denoting some variation of “_wait, have I made a wrong turn?_” cross his face, she swiped sharply at the wall adjacent to her, creating a loud, horrible noise and mini-avalanche of crumbling stone fragments. Mandarin made a loud noise himself, but it was desperately curbed as he clapped a hand over his mouth, stumbling backwards to press his back against a wall, staring horrified in the direction of the sound.

Watching the monkey attempt a hasty retreat the way he _thought_ would lead him back to an area he knew, only to become more lost – watching him try to smother real panic and _fear_ – had made her feel more like herself than she had in ages.

She eventually revealed herself when he had once again pressed his back to the wall and covered his mouth, this time also beginning to shake. She played it off though she were simply making her rounds and had stumbled across him by chance, and reluctantly led him back to the more inhabitable sections of the temple. He followed annoyingly close behind her the entire way, but it had been worth it to catch him in such an obvious state of vulnerability. When she initially sneered at him for it, his retorts had been flustered and weak, and after a bit more pushing he sank into enraged, humiliated silence.

Regrettably, the incident had left him very reluctant to venture from the areas he had apparently memorized, so it would seem her game had been ended prematurely.

Somehow, she still couldn’t work up the energy to kill him.

She was back out looking for food, because she’d neglected it for too long and now she was, indeed, incredibly uncomfortable. Not at all helping her discomfort was the fact that it was roughly fifteen _thousand_ degrees outside, and horrendously muggy to boot.

Valina mostly elected to ignore the passing of seasons, but it was very difficult not to recognize the first inklings of summer when they presented themselves. It was the worst time of the year, as far as she was concerned; obviously she’d notice.

That said, many of the other telltale signs of summer’s arrival were… notably absent. Not in terms of weather or temperature or really anything to do with the environment, but the wildlife – such as it was – seemed quieter. Subdued, almost. And she was having a surprisingly difficult time finding anything worthwhile to hunt because of it. Oh, she’d found a few small things she’d managed to snap up, but nothing particularly filling—

She stopped in her tracks. She was back at where she’d killed the large rat two weeks ago. And she was sure of this, because the remains of the rat were still _there_.

That… didn’t make since. Not necessarily the remains themselves; the rat had reached the appropriate level of decomposition given the surrounding temperature and span of time it had been dead. No, what didn’t make since was that it was there to begin with. The Zone was a literal _jungle._ _Something_ should have eaten it by now. There was admittedly some evidence that smaller creatures had picked it over, but the predator formless roaming the Zone – particularly some of the ones in this area – could be _huge_. If they’d found the rat’s remains (and they _should _have by now), they would have been able to eat it in one gulp.

Valina stared for a moment, bewildered, before slowly moving away from the carcass. The situation was strange, but hardly important. Just freak happenstance, most likely.

She continued on until eventually finding something to eat, and would forget about the incident by the time she returned back to her temple.

* * *

In the end, Mandarin _had _ended up sleeping on stone. With the witch still alive (and, presumably, still using her bed, if she’d ever had one to begin with), he’d decided to simply find the most defensible spot he could and sleep there. Said spot had turned out to be a sizable crack in one of the inner walls, with just enough space for him to wriggle in and out of. It wasn’t anywhere close to _comfortable_, but he found he would rather have the security of being hidden and out of reach of potential aggressors if he was made to choose. Comfort was a rarity in his life, anyway.

The main thing was that, if nothing else, it was a spot to return to. A checkpoint of sorts. The labyrinth-like halls of the temple dragged his mind back to truly dark places when he wandered them for too long. Not so much in terms of physical appearance (they weren’t vibrantly colored or _squishy _at least), but because it felt like there was no rhyme or reason to them. He could walk for hours and somehow end up back at the same spot over thirty times. He could turn perhaps three corners and not be able to find where he’d started for the life of him. The Dark One’s insides were similar, in that there almost seemed to be levels, as well as invisible pitfalls and dead ends abound. To further his anxiety (or, he hoped, perhaps simply because of it) he frequently got the feeling he was being _watched_.

Not to mention he’d _heard_ things when he was alone. Which, combined with the aforementioned feeling of being watched, did absolutely nothing to ease his feelings of unnerve.

It all stemmed from being alone, he suspected. If there’d been someone else around (please note: some_one_, not some_thing_, or whatever it was that stalked the halls), he couldn’t imagine he would be that terribly bothered. The witch had never really been an option in that regard, despite being the only other intelligent form of life he’d encountered so far. Not only was their mutual hatred of each other still going strong, but she seemed much more… _withdrawn_ than she had previously. Mandarin wasn’t exactly complaining; he certainly wasn’t as though he’d been hoping to have any deep conversations with her. But the fact that there would be days on end where they would run into each other and yet still not manage to say a single _word_ was mildly upsetting.

He didn’t bother asking how she’d survived what their master had done to her, or why she was now a formless. It likely made about as much sense as how he’d survived everything that had happened to _him._ There was no point in trying to dissect reasons. She simply _had, _like it or not.

Lately though, regardless of the witch’s quality of company, he found himself shadowing her anyway. Not to an interfering degree, he felt. It was simply that if she moved from one room to the next, he made sure to be in the next one over. There’d been an incident that he willfully didn’t think about, both because of the emotional discomfort it had caused him during and the resulting humiliation of the aftermath. It hadn’t left him overly eager to wander by himself as he had been, and knowing Valina was nearby helped somewhat. He wasn’t stupid enough to expect _help _from her should something attack, but he liked his odds of surviving an attack against the two of them better than he did against only himself. And knowing she was there (as much as he would rather it be nearly anyone else) was… _stabilizing,_ in a way.

Valina, apparently, disagreed.

“_What,_” she asked scathingly over her shoulder, abruptly halting her trek down the corridor, “do you _want_, Monkey?”

Mandarin didn’t move or talk for a moment. He hadn’t exactly been trying to be _stealthy_ about trailing the witch, but he hadn’t been being annoyingly obtrusive, either. And yet he still felt rather like he’d just been caught misbehaving.

A bit annoyed at having been called out despite not _doing_ anything, he scowled and asked, “Am I not allowed to walk the hallways anymore, Witch?”

“Walk them, _fine_,” she snapped, turning fully to face him. “But you’ve been dogging every step I take for the last _week_. What do you _want?_”

Mandarin felt the same sense of shame he’d had at the end of their previous interaction flaring in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t precisely answer that question _honestly_…

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he deflected unconvincingly. “Simple coincidence.”

“It is _not _a ‘simple coincidence’ that every time I leave a room I notice you three steps behind me!” she snarled. “Or that if I remain in one spot for too long you’ll show up not long after!”

“You’ve done nothing to make me _leave_,” Mandarin challenged, the near suicidal sense of defiance rearing its head again now that he was cornered. “For as much as I’m apparently annoying you, this is the first you’ve said on the matter.” Then, realization striking, “You didn’t even tell me to leave when I first arrived. You could have spared yourself this, yet you said nothing.”

Valina remained visibly irritated, but now Mandarin sensed a distinct feeling of discomfort. “You had no overt reason to let me stay here,” he went on. “There’s no goal for us to work towards. We don’t even _like_ each other. Why didn’t you drive me out?”

“Do you see anyone else around here?!” she finally burst, gesturing widely at nothing. At Mandarin’s thrown silence, she sneered and crossed her arms. “Your company, _detestable_ though it is, is better than no company at all.”

Mandarin’s scowl was so intense he could almost feel it searing his face, but he said nothing back. The sentiment mirrored his feelings towards her. For once, it would seem, they were in agreement over something.

Drumming the claws of his hand nervously, he slowly muttered, “I suppose you could attribute my continued presence to something similar.” Less distinctly and with mounting awkwardness he repeated, “‘Your company is better than no company.’” Then, more firmly, “Why are you getting so irritated at my _company_ if it’s what you _want,_ though?”

“I _don’t _want your company,” she scoffed. “Being around you quite literally makes me feel like I’m watching the last fibers of my sanity come unwound. But I’m sick to _death_ of being the only thing for miles and miles capable of complex thought.”

Feeling remarkably like he’d just been tricked into admitting something only to have the rug ripped out from underneath him, he bit back, “How interesting, I would never have suspected you even possessed that ability yourself, Witch.”

He was half-expecting her to hit him with a spell of some sort for that. It brokered the question as to why he would knowingly antagonize the witch when he _knew_ it would end painfully for him, but he privately asserted it was a matter of defending his honor. While he certainly didn’t _relish_ the resulting agony from his infractions, he took vindictive (if not slightly masochistic) pride in proving that – for all her power – Valina could never control him entirely.

He was therefore very surprised when – instead of the expected spell – the witch lunged forward, punching him so hard in the face he actually cracked his head on the floor as he was sent sprawling across it.

He was momentarily disoriented, thrown by her blatant disregard for their previous script and perhaps just a bit dazed from the blow. Then he snarled, throwing himself upright. She wanted to play it that way? _Fine_. He could do that.

There was no coordination. There was no strategy. There was only kicking and punching and biting and slashing at each other with ruthless, animalistic recklessness. Black blood sprayed from each of them.

Mandarin couldn’t work out why the witch wasn’t using her magic; they were practically on equal ground fighting as they were, really the only advantage she’d ever had over him was her _magic_. She wasn’t stupid enough to forgo that for honor or any other stupid reason, why wasn’t she _using it?_

A thought struck him, and after avoiding a blow he stumbled back a few paces, staring at her wide-eyed.

What if the reason she hadn’t yet used her magic against him was…

“You’ve _lost _it, haven’t you Witch?” he asked, which was enough to bring her advance to a faltering stop. “You’ve lost your magic!”

She didn’t move for a second, expression blank of the ferocity it had bore a second ago. He was _right_.

He started cackling, which was enough to get Valina moving again. He dodged a vicious swipe of her claws and returned with one of his own. The marks he made in her stomach were dark and deep and satisfying to look at, and made her cry out in pain.

And then, before his eyes, he watched the blood cascading down her torso congeal, and the wound close up entirely. They both looked at where the wound had been, momentarily staggered.

How had she done that? _He _couldn’t even do that!!

Slowly, Valina got over her shock, and then redoubled her efforts to eviscerate him. They once again degenerated to mindless mauling.

He eventually found purchase to heft himself onto her, and bit down with all his strength on her shoulder. She screamed piercingly, enraged, then sank her claws agonizingly into his flesh and threw him across the room. His jaws, clamped as they were, took a chunk of her shoulder with him as he went. He hit the far wall hard enough to make his ears ring.

They didn’t lunge back towards each other. Bruised, battered and bloody, they stayed in their respective corners of the makeshift fighting ring they’d turned the room into, panting and in pain. Slowly, Valina pushed herself to her feet, holding the shoulder he’d bitten even as the wound closed. They offered each other final, furious glares, and she staggered out of the room without another word.

Mandarin tried to do the same sometime later, but the pain that shot through his entire body revealed attempting such to be a pointless endeavor. He shakily lay back down where he’d been flung, and that was where slept that night.

* * *

Their fight turned out to be the first of many. Upon learning that they were now essentially on equal levels, Mandarin’s scathing insults reached new levels of antagonism. Conversely, once more having _powers _she could hone and develop almost gave Valina the illusion of purpose again, which was a sensation she clung to greedily. She would often seek the monkey out for the sole purpose of testing her abilities.

She was recovering from one such spat now. Mandarin had made an offhand comment about something or other in regards to her general state of being. The insult had rubbed her already raw sense of self-worth the wrong way, so she’d retaliated accordingly. She’d come out better than him from the fight, but she couldn’t confidently say she’d _won_ it. Neither of them ever really did.

She was wandering around outside at the moment. She didn’t really care to look at the monkey presently, and the thought of sequestering herself in her room seemed equally distasteful. So she decided she’d go for a walk to clear her head and bring her still burning temper down to a more manageable simmer.

It wasn’t working. On top of her emotions still sitting in a knot at the bottom of her chest, walking around outside was giving her a terrible case of phantom anxiety she couldn’t pin down the cause of. Something about her surroundings felt _misplaced, _like everything had been moved two inches to the right, but then when she checked she found everything to be exactly where she’d last left it. It was maddening. It wasn’t until halfway through her trek _back _to her temple, irritated and unsettled, that she finally realized what was wrong.

There were no sounds. There were no rustlings of animals moving around in the underbrush, or calling to each other from the trees.

The Zone was _silent_.

She returned home disconcerted and staring at the sky. She knew that animals were much more attuned to changes in weather; perhaps there was a storm coming? That didn’t _entirely_ make sense, as not only was it merely slightly overcast (at most), but summer on Shuggazoom was essentially the dry season. Storms that would require the wildlife to seek shelter almost never happened in the summer.

Moreover, even if they _did_, formless – which were what the Zone was predominately populated with – didn’t really have instincts beyond “destroy.” _They_ should have still been around…

She cast one last look at the surrounding jungle before shaking her head and finally reentering her temple. The animals had clearly just caught wind of something they didn’t like, whatever that may be. And without a master to make up for their lack of minds or wills of their own, it wouldn’t be that strange for the Zone’s formless to have simply shuffled off into nonexistence.

In any event, she decided she’d rather be behind stone walls for whatever might be brewing, and slipped through a crack without further contemplation.

* * *

The simian had evidently gathered his courage and resumed his task of mapping out the temple, much to Valina’s delight. She’d been growing quite bored. She once again took to silently creeping behind him, waiting for the precise moment to make a sound, but resolved not to do anything big this time. She’d build back up to that.

She watched him from behind a corner as he walked, and began lightly drumming her claws. He whipped around at the sound, she felt the minute thrill of his fear run through her, and she retreated back behind the turn. She was fairly certain she was sufficiently hidden, but decided to err on the side of caution.

She waited for a few seconds, listening for him to start moving again, but he seemed to be frozen in place. She briefly debated forgoing her earlier plan to start small and go for something larger to get him going, but decided against—

Something suddenly leapt at her from an adjoining hallway, and she just barely blocked the blow in time. Retreating back to gather herself and prepare for an attack of her own, she realized the thing that had jumped at her was _Mandarin_.

He must have doubled back once he heard the noise. He hadn’t been lost at all this time. He’d been trying to _catch_ what had been stalking him.

“Witch?” he said slowly, clearly not expecting it to be _her_ to be the one he was confronting. “What are you… doing…” She saw the pieces of information finally click in his expression, and then his eyes were aflame with rage. “_It’s been you this entire time!!”_

She was more prepared for the attack this time, and was able to deflect it more confidently. “Indeed,” she jeered, both annoyed that the game was _officially_ over but delighted that she could finally gloat. “You should have seen the look on your _pathetic _face every time I made you _jump!_”

The mortification and fury burning in his eyes were so _bright _that even Valina had to admit he looked dangerous. He was certainly coming for her harder than he ever had during any of their previous fights.

“All that posturing,” she grunted, now returning some of his attacks, “all that swaggering self-importance, and you’re terrified of being alone in the _dark!_” She managed to catch him across the face on the word “dark,” though sadly he’d managed to move before she could take his eye.

She wasn’t enjoying this like she should. Before, tormenting the simian had made her feel almost like _herself_ again. Rubbing the weakness of others in their faces was practically an art form to her; she ought to be exhilarated now that she finally had the chance to do so. Instead, she got no more enjoyment out of it than she had from anything else she tried lately, and it was making her rage and despair in turns.

As her frustration solidified into a cold, hard lump in her stomach, she decided it was somehow Mandarin’s fault.

“_Don’t you dare talk to me about fearing being alone!_” he shrieked, hackles raised and black blood dripping down his face. “You’re the one willingly sharing a space with someone you don’t even _like! _And do you want to know why?! Because no one in your entire sorry life has ever _willingly_ wanted to stay near you, so you have to _settle!”_

Valina’s insides twisted so violently she physically jolted.

“Why are you in this temple right now, Witch?” he asked savagely, swiping at the blood on his face. “Because the master didn’t _want_ you. He didn’t want you after he trained you, so he sent you here. He didn’t want you after you resurrected him, so he _killed _you. Your parents _let_ him send you away the first time, then tried to kill you themselves when you returned, so _they _didn’t want you either!” His voice was breaking as he screamed. Valina felt her entire body seizing up the more he talked. “And I don’t blame them! You’re _vile _and _vicious_ and your mind, body, and soul are distorted and _ugly_, and no one – _no one_ – will _ever _want you for as long as you live!”

The twisting of her insides had become painful. Her throat was closing up and her eyes burned, and she’d never hated anyone in her entire life as much as she hated the putrid excuse for a simian in front of her.

“And you’re so _loved?_” she snarled. Gods, her voice was breaking too now. “You’re not even _real!_”

His furious expression absolutely crumbled, and she was overtaken by a cold, bitter sense of victory.

“Magic always comes with some price or another, _Monkey_,” she sneered. “While you used my magic to subject the Hyperforce to _their _greatest fears, I got to see all of _yours_. The Dark One Worm, falling apart, I saw all of it, and among those things I saw that you are _not _the real Mandarin!”

She took a step forward, advancing. “You’ve never had any true allies of your own. All the memories you have fitting under the heading of ‘happy’ aren’t even _yours_. No one has ever, _ever_ actually cared about your repugnant existence. The mas—” pause, reset, “—_Skeleton King _wanted his old creation back, and failing that he settled for a perfect copy of such. But you know you’re _not_ a perfect copy, don’t you? The original Mandarin was disciplined and fearless and _you _do whatever fits your mood while you jump at shadows. The only reason anyone treats you as anything more than an _it_ is because none of them know you’re a _clone._ If they did you would be just as disposable as any other formless.” She made a sound that under different circumstances might have been a laugh. “You’re _pathetic_, and _worthless_, and _fake,_ and your entire purpose in life was to be a poor man’s imitation of something _better_. What are you now that you’ve been exposed?”

Tears were mixing with the blood that ran down his face. “_At least I saw my purpose through!”_ he spat, voice continually shattering. “You dedicated your entire life to a cause only to get booted from it! You’re _useless!_”

_kill him_

_kill him_

_kill him_

_kill him_

_KILL HIM_

_but then you’ll be alone again_

Valina couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. The sight of his face was making her so violently furious she felt sick, and as much as she wanted to simply tear it off the fight was going nowhere. With a final snarl she turned on her heel and fled down the corridor, chest constricting as the stinging in her eyes finally drew forth tears.

She could definitely, _regrettably_, still cry.

* * *

Valina was very tired.

After leaving the abhorrent monkey to his own pathetic devises, she had retreated to her room and purged what felt like a lifetime’s worth of emotional backlog. She’d stopped a while ago, though she wasn’t sure if it was because she’d run out of tears to cry or the energy to cry them with.

It was pathetic and she hated it, and she hated _him_ for driving her to it. If she’d still had her magic, she would have peeled every last scrap of flesh from his bones and then put him back together just to watch him snivel over it.

She sat up forcefully from her bed and strode towards her door. Her room was too confining. She couldn’t cry anymore, but she couldn’t sleep either, or really do much of anything to distract herself. She could see from one end of her room to the other, making it that much more egregiously apparent that there was no one else in it. That she was alone. The sense of isolation was already choking the breath from her body, she didn’t need _that_ helping it along.

She had a brief desire to create a few of her formless – just for company, just for old time’s sake – but it passed swiftly as she was confronted with the futility of it all. She was past the point she could fool herself into thinking the mindless, shambling formless were capable of providing any real form of companionship. The thought left her feeling emptier still.

The stone corridors were also empty. Her aimless roving wasn’t really helping like she’d hoped it would. Instead, it was making her feel like a ghost.

She quickened her pace as she realized that, technically_,_ that was exactly what she was_._

She turned a corner, entering yet another empty chamber, just like every other she’d wandered into during her trek. This one was something of an outlier, however. It wasn’t _completely _empty. Mandarin sat curled in the corner, raising his head at the sound of her approach. She felt a sense of dark retribution as she noted how puffy and tearstained his face was. Their respective glares were matched in terms of loathing.

Valina was very, _very_ tired. She didn’t have the energy for this. But then, when did she really have the energy for _anything_ as of late? For as much as he enraged her, as much as she hated him, he was still _somebody_.

“You’re a mess,” she sneered. “How _pathetic_.”

He seethed, bearing his teeth as his mouth twisted into a snarl. “You hardly look any better, _Witch_,” he spat back hoarsely. “Go crawl back into the hole you came from.”

She glared yet more daggers at him before stalking into the room, unabashedly for the sole purpose of antagonistic.

He was about as pleased as she’d expected him to be, which in turn was a small victory for her. “What do you _want?_”

“Your slow, agonizing demise,” she said testily, sliding down to sit against the wall framing the doorway. “But luckily for you I’m too drained to be bothered at the moment.”

“Find somewhere else to be drained, Witch,” he snapped, drawing his legs up to moodily rest his arms on his knees, and then his chin on his arms. His tail wasn’t exactly wrapped around him, but it did lay in a semi-circle in front of him like some paltry excuse for a barrier. “I was here first.”

She laughed, curt and cold and humorless. “Try again, Simian, I got here _years_ before you did.”

“That explains quite a lot, actually,” he shot back with equal sourness. “The years alone have clearly gone to your mind.”

Her already darkened expression blackened still further. Tired or not, _alone _or not, if he went there again, she _would _kill him. She’d rip his horrible tongue straight from his mouth and snap both his arms and legs as he choked to death on his own blood, _she’d do it_—

“How long?”

“What?”

The monkey had sunk further into the little ball he’d formed, so now all she could see of his face were his eyes peeping up over his arms to glare at her. “How long have you been here?” he specified hatefully. And… _raggedly_, she realized. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who’d been left exhausted from their previous argument.

Bringing her knees up herself now, she said, “Since I was fourteen.” Then amended, “Thirteen and three quarters, technically.”

“And how many years ago was that?”

“What year is it now?”

He snorted mirthlessly. “Too long, then.”

She glared at him, and he glared at her. But it occurred to Valina that that infinitesimal exchange they’d just had was the closest she’d gotten to a genuine conversation in literal _years_.

Valina was very tired, and she knew that on principle she ought to make the monkey pay for what he’d said to her one way or another. But he was _somebody_, and he was something to talk to. So regardless of her personal feelings towards _him_, she supposed that would be enough for now.

* * *

Mandarin was used to feeling like garbage, whether it was from his latest injury or just the inescapable burden of existing, and he was grudgingly willing to admit that he frequently looked the part. Most of the time, he could make peace with this. No task of any actual importance required him to look _good_, it just required him to be competent.

Other times…

“Has anyone told you lately that you look an utter mess?” Valina asked by way of greeting as he turned the corner.

He stiffened, immediately uncomfortable. “I don’t recall asking _you_ either way!”

She shrugged grumpily. Apparently she was in a mood and he had become her designated scapegoat. “Simply asking, Simian. You’ve been this way since I met you you; I can’t imagine I’m the first one to mention it.”

“And you’re so put together?” he asked hotly, gesturing at her. There were layers of blood coating her claws, front, and mouth. “You were _not_ like this when I first met _you_, and unless the voices in your head have given you a once over I can’t imagine anyone has mentioned it, so allow me to be the first: you look _horrible_.”

She glared, but once again shrugged moodily. “My appearance hasn’t exactly been a concern of mine since attaining this form.” Then, sardonically, “It isn’t as though I can do anything new with my _hair_.”

Mandarin gave a short laugh that leaned a bit too close to an indignant squawk. “Nonono Witch, _my_ appearance can be attributed to it ‘not being a concern;’ _you _quite literally looked like something crawled out of someone’s _nightmare_.” He gestured once more at the blood. “That goes well beyond simply _not caring._”

She looked at him, snarling, then just as he was bracing for the inevitable attack, she turned on her heel and stalked away. That was… out of character.

Somewhat. She had in fact done this after their last argument. Perhaps she was still worn out from that? It had been very _involved_, after all. Perhaps she simply didn’t care to deal with this and had done the mature thing and walked away.

Mandarin scowled. She was _not_ going to get bragging rights over this, not if he had anything to say about it. He promptly took off in the direction Valina had gone.

Not for the first time, he ended up cursing the building’s designers for including so many corners. How was one supposed to keep track of anything? He was becoming increasingly fed up, and was just about to start calling for the witch to come out and finish the argument she started when a sound caught his attention.

He heard… _water._

Following the noise, indignation momentarily forgotten, he came to a large archway, which at first glance seemed to lead confusingly to a stone wall about four feet from the threshold. Poking his head through revealed that the wall had _another_ archway just out of view of the first, and poking his head through _that_ explained the existence of the bizarre mini-hallway between the two.

It was a _bathroom._

There was a bath embedded in the floor (which, incidentally, was the size of a small swimming pool) and numerous nozzles and crude levers embedded in the wall, which presumably acted as showers. There was another archway on the far side, and this one also led to what seemed to be a stone wall. He presumed that led to the toilets.

The witch was seated in the bath, up to her shoulders in water. She glanced up to where he stood perplexed, gave him a rebellious look, and resumed scrubbing blood from her claws.

Hesitantly, he walked further into the room, glancing around. If Valina noticed or cared, she made no comment on it. He wondered suddenly how the plumbing situation worked considering the age and general state of the rest of the temple. Moreover, had it been something the original architects had included, or had Valina somehow fashioned it herself? He was inclined to believe the former, as everything in the room seemed to fit the general style of everything else in the temple, but how had an ancient civilization managed to create working plumbing? Conversely, how had _Valina_ created working plumbing in a temple that was _at minimum_ centuries old?

He came to a halt at the edge of the bath, and slowly sank into a crouch as he stared at the water.

If he were to be completely honest, his neglecting to take proper care of himself hadn’t been a result of simply being apathetic. Well, it _had_, in part; he genuinely hadn’t seen the point of going through the trouble. But it could also be owed to the potentially irrational (yet very dominant) fear that his armor had been the only thing holding him together. He’d _died_, and he knew what happened to dead bodies after a certain period of time, they fell apart. He’d had nightmares of his armor somehow coming loose and then collapsing into a pile of body parts on the ground.

Additionally, he didn’t suspect that submerging a crumbling lump of carbon in water would help it stay together any better. So he’d allowed himself to succumb to his apathy, and hadn’t bothered.

But – and while this was not the first time he’d had this thought, it seemed particularly blaring as he crouched at the edge of the pool-like bath – it occurred to him that his fears didn’t quite make sense. If he were going to fall apart the second he removed his armor, that would mean he was decomposing. If he were decomposing, it would be all over his body. His face (mutilated though _that _was) was free of any rot that he could see.

Moreover, decomposing bodies _smelled_. He liked to believe that he’d have _noticed_ if he smelt like rotting meat, but even if he hadn’t _Valina_ definitely would have, and she’d have been as tactless as possible as she pointed it out. So far she’d just said he _looked_ atrocious (which, for the record, was a point that he despised he couldn’t argue against).

He looked into the rippling surface of the water, and with a deep breath he didn’t technically need, started to unlatch his armor.

He didn't share the bizarre (and frankly stupid) sentiment of humans that being unclothed was in and of itself a shameful experience, but the effects of the Dark One - not to mention the copious amounts battle damage he'd sustained - had left his body in a state that he didn't exactly want to showcase. _Particularly _not to Valina.

He told himself he was proving her _wrong_. If she was going to be petty about this, he could do that too. And she would hate and deride him no matter _what_ he looked like, so it wasn’t of any real consequence. Her opinion didn’t matter.

He slid into the water very fast once he’d gotten all the pieces off, sinking in up to his chin.

A small consolation, however: he’d been so busy deflecting thoughts of Valina’s judgement he’d momentarily forgotten to worry about falling apart. As he realized this, he also realized that, happily, he was indeed still in one piece. Just as a weight he hadn’t realized was on his shoulders was lifting, his attention was drawn back to the other side of the bath.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Valina asked, giving him a look halfway between incredulous and indignant.

He rolled his eyes. Now that he was in the water, he decided rather firmly that he wouldn’t be budging from it. It felt… nice, actually. It made him feel just slightly less like garbage.

“What does it look like, Witch? Same as you.”

She had a moment where it looked like she had a tiny aneurysm of sheer exasperation before she let out a huff. “I suppose I should have guessed that you wouldn’t have a single shred of decency in you.”

He threw up his hands in an indignant shrug, water splashing lightly around him. “‘Decency’ _what?_ I’m nowhere even near you! This bath could easily fit five people and then some!” Even more indignantly, “You haven’t even worn _clothes_ since you died, at least not around me you haven’t.”

“There’s been no need,” she shot back. “And it’s the principle.”

Now, Mandarin understood that humans didn’t like to be seen without clothes. He didn’t understand _why_. It was his understanding that the only reason they wore them in the first place was because they were woefully maladapted and didn’t have fur to protect them from the elements. But fine, it was none of his affair one way or the other. But neither of them _were_ human. And even if they were, even if Valina _had_ continued fully dressing herself up until this point, they were both submerged in the water. Nothing would have been visible anyway.

To that end, there was actually zero mockery in his voice as he asked, “Principle of what?”

She looked at him dumbfounded for a moment, before eventually growling softly in irritation. “Stay over there and allot me this single moment of peace then, Monkey.”

He glared as she turned back to what she was doing, because he hadn’t intended on getting any closer than this anyway. That, he suspected, could only end in pain of some variety. Honestly he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had physically touched him where it hadn’t caused pain, and then realized that that was because for him personally, no one ever had. He certainly didn’t expect _Valina _to break that cycle.

The water wasn’t painful though. The water was pleasantly warm and he actually felt some measure of relaxed sitting in it. He gently waved his arms out in front of himself beneath the water’s surface, enjoying the sensation of them cutting through the water and just generally feeling calm for once.

“I would have thought,” the voice from the other end of the bath suddenly began, “that you’d have attempted some kind of revenge on the Hyperforce by now. You don’t strike me as the type who loses graciously. Why haven't you?”

He paused what he was doing, then raised an eyebrow grumpily. “What happened to ‘peace,’ Witch?”

“That only extends to you,” she said shortly, waving it off. “I’ll disturb _your_ peace as much as I like.”

He glared. “That hardly seems fair.”

“You’ve disturbed my peace just by being here, and you’ll notice I very politely haven’t drowned you for it. Now answer me.”

Yet more glaring, but with a huff and a crossing of arms he grumbled, “There’d be no point.”

She raised an eyebrow herself now, indicating him to elaborate, so he grudgingly continued, “The Hyperforce only just _barely_ won the war. They are currently at their literal weakest. If there was ever a time to strike back at them, it would now, but…” a sudden, violent sensation of frustration and rage bubbled to life in his chest, “…but I don’t have any assets to strike back _with,_” he finished, frustrated, slashing at the water to vent. “There’s nothing I can do to them at present, and they’re only going to regain strength from here, so again there really isn’t any point.”

There was a pause, after which Valina said “hm.” Mandarin looked up from the water he’d disturbed grouchily, because that couldn’t be it.

It wasn’t. She went on, “I don’t recall you being so easily discouraged.”

“Yes well,” he snapped, “war forces us to face a number of unpleasant realities.” Then, before she could press him to elaborate once more, he returned fire and asked, “What about you, Witch? You’ve been here since the master did away with you, yes? That’s nearly two years. Why is it you never resurfaced to exact revenge of your own? You don’t expect me to believe you were _sulking_ all that time?”

Her expression was hard to gauge. It wasn’t necessarily that she looked like she hadn’t been expecting the question, more that perhaps she’d been hoping keep him away from it with questions of her own. Well, she was the one to start asking questions in the first place. He’d have been happy to just sit and splash in the water in silence.

“…there was no point,” she echoed finally. “You say you have no assets to fight the Hyperforce at their weakest? Skeleton King was at his _strongest_, what assets do you think I had?” She drew her knees up so they poked up above the surface. Her expression was that of someone trying to look aloof, and failing. “And anyway, I wasn’t even sure if I _wanted_ vengeance.” After a moment she said, perhaps a bit faster than normal, “Truthfully after being ousted I more or less stopped wanting _anything_.”

Mandarin stared for a second, then said “hm.” When she turned back to look at him (she’d let her gaze drift to a far corner), he said, “That’s not how I recall you to be, either.”

She made a sound in the back of her throat and rolled her eyes, as if to say _cheers, then._

There was a pause, there was quiet between them, and there was the echoing sound of water gently lapping against the sides of the bath.

“I don’t know what to do with myself now,” Mandarin said suddenly, focusing firmly on the water and once more swishing his arms through it, purely for a distraction this time. “My entire existence has consisted of working towards one goal for one person, and they’re both gone now.”

He hadn’t the foggiest idea why he’d randomly presented this for sharing. It wasn’t as though he expected any pity from Valina, and moreover he wasn’t even sure he’d want it anyway. But, conversely, it wasn’t as though he had anything to lose from sharing it. It wasn’t personal enough to be thrown back at him (and anyway Valina had already played _that_ particular card), and they were apparently talking about things. He wanted this useless weight off his chest. He’d never said anything about it out loud before, maybe this would help.

(He’d never really said _anything_ out loud before, at least not about things like this, and he was… _tired_.)

He was feeling increasingly awkward though, so then again perhaps not. Hoping to do some damage control, he continued with would-be casualness, “It isn’t as though I’m particularly bothered by it; I imagine I’ll find something to do _eventually_. It’s just for the time being I feel relatively—”

“—worthless,” Valina finished bitterly.

He’d been going to say “idle,” or something like that, but… that did hit things rather uncomfortably on the head.

“…right,” he said quietly.

She scoffed ruefully. “Here’s to a lack of purpose then,” she said, swiping at the water agitatedly like he’d done earlier.

“May it die a thousand deaths,” Mandarin agreed weakly.

Maybe it was just the comfort derived from the water skewing his perspective of things, but he wasn’t finding the witch completely intolerable at the moment.

The first month of summer ended with a tenuous truce.


	3. Second Month

“You mean to tell me,” Mandarin said, sounding at the very edge of his patience, “that you have not eaten a single cooked meal since you _died?”_

Valina swiped some of the remaining blood from her mouth, indignant at his hypocrisy. “You mean to tell _me_ that you have not eaten a single meal _period_ since _you_ died?” she shot back, gesturing at his gaunt, ravaged frame. “Worry about yourself before you start lecturing _me_, Monkey.”

He pouted heavily, plonking down into a crouch to conceal the view of his body as much as possible. “I haven’t eaten in _ages_; I don’t suspect my body even remembers it ever needed to. _You_ still make a habit of it.”

She raised an eyebrow. “…And?”

Mandarin made a sound of utter frustration. “It’s the _principle _of the matter, Witch! You’re not some, some—” a series of furious gestures, “feral _animal_ who doesn’t know how to cook for herself!”

Feeling uncomfortable with the (still _massively _hypocritical) scrutiny she was being placed under, Valina scowled at him. “The fact that I’m eating _at all_ puts me a step above of you, Monkey. If _you_ want to hunt food and then drag it back here to cook it, by all means. I do what I have the energy for.”

With that she turned and left, feeling irritated.

_That could’ve been a fight_, she realized sometime later. Had it been… what, perhaps a week or two prior? That would have been enough to instigate a fight. _You don’t cook your food?_ and then one of them would have thrown a punch or something.

She was somewhat at a loss for _why_ it hadn’t this time. She’d been plenty irritated by the monkey’s useless and unwarranted comment, which was usually all it took for her to deem violence appropriate. But this time, all she’d wanted was to not see his stupid face for a bit. 

She hadn’t been filled with her usual desire to hurt him when he did something she didn’t like.

She likely could have ruminated on this for a good while longer, but at that moment she turned a corner and caught the scent something wafting through the corridors.

He _didn’t…_

She started moving quicker down the hall following the scent. It was one part fire and woodsmoke, the other part—

She turned the corner into a room. There was a small fire burning within, which Mandarin was fretting over. Above it, on a makeshift spit, was a dead bird of some description.

—the other part was _meat _cooking.

Valina stared at the scene, not entirely convinced her brain was interpreting the images her eyes were providing correctly, when Mandarin noticed her hovering in the doorway. He promptly adopted the expression of someone whose guest had arrived late and hadn’t bothered to notify him first.

“_Sit,_” he instructed firmly.

Statistically speaking, Valina did not appreciate being ordered around. Yet another thing that would have resulted in an instant brawl had it happened earlier. However, she couldn’t deny a sense of morbid curiosity here, so she humored him and did as requested, seating herself in front of the fire.

Mandarin ripped off one of the legs from the bird before passing it to her. “_Eat._”

Again, not something she appreciated, which was hopefully communicated with the glare she threw at him. Regardless, she figured she might as well see this thing through to the end, and took a bite.

Meat really did taste better cooked.

(She resolved to never admit this to him out loud.)

“Like I said, Witch, it’s the principle of the matter,” he said triumphantly.

Unsure how to respond to that, she fell back on common courtesy and simply said, “Thank you.”

Mandarin looked remarkably proud of himself, and for once she wasn’t completely annoyed by it.

After a few more bites, she raised an eyebrow at him. “Aren’t you going to have some?”

He shook his head. “I don’t require food, if you’ll recall. There’s no point.”

She swallowed, then allowed an admittedly less than pleasant smile slide across her face. “You mean to tell me you went _all_ the way out into the Zone by yourself, hunted and killed something, brought it _all_ the way back here and cooked it, just for me?” She cooed. “Why Mandarin, I had no idea you were so _sweet_.”

He bristled. “I am _not!_”

“Nonsense. That’s a tremendous amount of effort to go through solely for someone else’s benefit. It’s adorable.”

“It isn’t either!” he insisted, looking flustered but trying to be angry about it. (It didn’t do much to disprove the previous statement, for the record.)

“You made me dinner.”

“_To prove a point!”_

“Irrelevant,” she sing-songed.

Mandarin looked furious before angrily ripping off the bird’s other leg and tearing into it. He tried to look like he was enjoying it presumably out of pure spite. If he was hoping to wipe the smug look of Valina’s face, he was to be very disappointed. Regardless, she resumed her own meal without another word.

* * *

Valina came to realize, as time went on, that there was probably a reason why they had both taken to frequently scrapping with each other, and it went beyond mutual dislike (though that had been a fairly large percentage of it). For starters, they both grew bored easily, and there weren’t a lot of other things to do around the temple. Moreover frustrations with life in general made the thought of beating the life out of something else highly appealing, and they were the only other things around with life to beat out of.

Finally, they both liked scrapping, plain and simple.

She didn’t precisely remember how it came about. She’d taken care not to say anything personally offensive, because while she was looking for a fight she hadn’t felt like dragging emotions into it. Mostly she’d just been challenging and aggressive. The end result was Mandarin rising gloriously to meet her challenges, and the fight began.

It was a lot like the ones they’d been having prior to… _whatever_ had happened between them, but without the emotions to drive it. They were both more focused as a result. It was less a maddened, feral brawl until one of them couldn’t stand up, and more… well, _coordinated_ was the only word she could think of that seemed to fit. There was more room to exhibit personal techniques and tricks they’d come up with. Additionally, her powers seemed to respond to her better as well.

By the end, they were both bruised, battered, and a little bloody, but for some reason neither one could seem to stop cackling.

* * *

Mandarin was hungry, and it was making his chest tight.

This, honestly, had been why he’d refrained from eating for so long. His body had, as he’d said, gone without food for such a period of time that it had stopped deeming it a worthy use of energy to alert him to obtain some. Eating the bird with the witch had evidently jumpstarted his system and made it remember “oh yes, we need that don’t we? Give us more!” just like he’d worried it would.

He hadn’t felt hunger since he’d been inside the Dark One Worm. He had been _so _hungry for _so_ long, and there had been nothing he could do to fix it.

He was hungry now.

He wasn’t sure where Valina had gone, and tracking her down had involved getting twisted around in the temple’s labyrinth of corridors (_at least they weren’t vibrantly colored and squishy_, _at least they weren’t vibrantly colored and squishy_). When he finally found her, he realized he wasn’t sure what to say.

He cleared his throat. “Was there, erm. Was there anything left of the bird we’d had?”

Valina shook her head. “Nothing but the scraps still clinging to bones.”

Mandarin felt his shoulders tensing involuntarily. “Would you happen to have food storage anywhere inside the temple?” he tried.

“I do, but there’s nothing in it at present.” She suddenly cocked her head to the side. “Why would I continuously hunt for food if I had reserves to fall on?”

Mandarin mumbled something back, mind moving much faster than he had reason for it to. Alright, so there was no food around. That was fine. He’d go find some more.

It had taken a while to find that bird before. What if he couldn’t find any? What if he went out to search for food and (_just like before_) he couldn’t find _any?_ How long until his hunger subsided again? Would it _ever? _How bad would it get—?

“Why do you ask?”

Mandarin hesitated, then – in a voice smaller than he would have liked – said, “I’m hungry.”

Valina gave him a searching look, likely wondering why he didn’t just do the very thing he’d mentally suggested to himself. After a moment she gave an emphatic _“ugh”_ and marched over to him. He momentarily forgot he was in the process of fretting when she lifted him up to swing him around to sit on her shoulder.

After a minute or so of walking (how she was able to make heads or tails of where she was headed, Mandarin didn’t know) they came to a part of the temple he had – apparently – never wandered through. There was a large wooden door separating the room beyond from the adjoining hallway. All the rooms he’d crossed so far had had open archways.

He realized why this room got special consideration as Valina pushed the door open. There were various personal items strewn about the space (books and what he was tempted to call “knickknacks,” but knowing the witch they were probably totems for something or other), and what was undoubtedly a bed sitting in the middle of a far wall.

This was Valina’s _bedroom_.

She strode over to the bed and unceremoniously chucked him onto it. As he rode out the aftershocks that came with being dropped onto a bed from a fair height, Valina said, “Take a _nap_ or something,” and walked back out the door, closing it behind her.

And then he was alone and very confused.

The room was… _nice_, actually, if such a term could be applied to a space within a crumbling temple. Nothing in _here_ was crumbling, at least. She had a bookshelf of sorts in the corner (which she was using to house most of the aforementioned books and knickknacks), a small table and chair, and what looked to be another doorway that had been curtained off with long, tattered pieces of fabric. There was even a window – or, well, there was a large gaping hole in the wall that had been crudely patched around the edges to make it seem more “finished.” He couldn’t decide if Valina had fixed up an already existing hole or if she’d blasted one herself after deciding she wanted her bedroom to have a view. He noticed a slight shimmer as he stared out of it, which made him suspect she’d cast some sort of spell to act as a barrier for want of glass.

The bed had a quilt that, while not _brightly_ colored, still had more variation to its scheme than Mandarin would have suspected something owned by Valina would have. He couldn’t work out where the witch had gotten an actual mattress, either_, _as everything else he’d seen in the temple looked carved or whittled, or otherwise composed of things Valina had obviously acquired locally. He didn’t suspect she’d cobbled together a _mattress _from local materials (though part of him couldn’t bring himself to discount this notion completely). The headboard had a series of intricate symbols carved into it, though whether they served some arcane purpose or were just there to be decorative Mandarin wasn’t sure.

Surprisingly, the witch’s abrupt and bizarre demand had managed to snap some semblance of sense into him. He wasn’t feeling _nearly_ as horrid as he had in the Dark One, and there was no reason to suspect he wouldn’t be able to find food later. Perhaps Valina knew of some spots that had greater numbers of game he could kill. Perhaps if he phrased the question properly, she’d assist him with it. There was no reason to panic.

And anyway… the bed was incredibly soft. He might as well take advantage of the opportunity he’d been granted. He hadn’t slept in a _real_ bed since…

…he’d _never_ slept in a real bed??

Slowly, he hunkered down on top of the quilt, and closed his eyes. Unsurprisingly, it smelt like Valina.

He was woken sometime later (he wasn’t sure how long, which irritated him slightly) by the sound of the door opening—

His head snapped up, the grogginess that had been clinging to him was abruptly thrown off.

—_and the smell of food!_

Valina was walking through the doorway, kicking it shut behind her with her foot. _And she was carrying two plates of food. _(There was an absolutely idiotic moment where his mind got temporarily stuck on ‘_where did she find plates?’_ before he kicked the thought away.)

He was somewhere between stuttering ‘where’ ‘how’ and ‘_why_’ when she supplied (somewhat forcefully and rushed), “This was a deer something-or-other, so there’s leftovers this time. I even _cooked_ it, since that’s _such_ a crucial step for you, so your complete and utmost gratitude would be preferable. I’ll accept nothing less than utter obsequiousness as payment.” Then, brusquely, “No eating on my bed, sit on the floor.”

Numbly, he did as she asked. Apparently satisfied, she nodded and passed him one of the plates, before sitting cross-legged next to him with the other.

He’d mentioned he was hungry, and Valina had gotten him food. He had _mentioned, in passing_, that he was _hungry,_ and _Valina _had – _unprompted _– gotten him food.

He felt like if his mental facilities weren’t completely_ broken_ then they had at least just suffered a very bad sprain.

“Did you make these just now?” he asked, gesturing at the plates the food sat on and grasping for anything to help straighten his thoughts out.

Her expression morphed from uncharacteristically evasive to bewildered. “‘Did I—’? _Do you think I spent my entire time living here without plates?_”

Mandarin mumbled something indistinct, shrugging. He made a mental note to mention the plates should he ever ask about the mattress.

He picked listlessly at the food. There was something writhing in his gut, and before he could try to put food on top of it he had to get it sorted first, hungry as he was.

“Why did you do this?” he finally asked.

She spared him a glance before returning attention to her own plate. “We’re even now,” she said airily.

That was… reasonable. Logical. Probably something he would do if in her shoes.

She gave him another brief look, then took to picking at her food with increased agitation. “And I suppose I simply didn’t want to deal with whatever mental hole you’d been about to throw yourself down. I figured it’d be easier to just get some food in you than it would to talk you out of a panic attack.”

Mandarin hadn’t realized he could blush anymore. It seemed unfair that he could; after all he’d been through would it really be too much to ask to receive _some_ compensation? Perhaps by way of his body _not_ going through physical processes that gave away that he had emotions?

“I wasn’t going down a mental _hole…_” he said indignantly. Valina gave him yet another look, though this one was both unimpressed and knowing. The unfortunate physical process his mind and body were subjecting him to grew worse.

“My hunger _might _have reminded me of my time within the Dark One _somewhat,_” he grumbled weakly. “And that might have been causing me some minor stress.” He glowered at Valina’s triumphant expression. “How could _you_ possibly have known that?”

(He hadn’t been that obvious, had he? No, surely not, he couldn’t have possibly worn his heart _that _far out on his sleeve… Oh gods but _did he?)_

She appeared briefly uncomfortable. Not a color he’d ever really seen on her. After a moment, she muttered, “I saw your fears, remember?”

“…_oh_.” He suddenly felt very awkward. “Right. Yes. Well, erm… I suppose that worked out rather well for me in this instance, didn’t it?” He wasn’t entirely sure the smile he was giving was appropriate, but nerves forced it out of him anyway.

It couldn’t have been all bad, because Valina gave a half smile too. “I hadn’t known you to be quite so _forgiving_, Monkey.”

His smile became a bit more genuine, and a bit sharper. “I hadn’t known _you_ to be quite so _accommodating, _Witch,” he said, motioning at the food.

“Don’t push your luck,” she shot back (her smile had grown as well).

* * *

Valina had once again taken to walking around outside her temple. Up until this point, she realized she’d only been leaving for food or to get away from Mandarin. Currently, she’d been stricken with insomnia, and wanted fresh air.

It was still unnervingly quiet outside. Which became even stranger when taking into consideration that the animals weren’t _gone_. Though more difficult, it was still not _impossible_ to hunt down things to eat (she and Mandarin had actually managed to adequately restock her food supply). It was more as though a hush had fallen over all the animals inhabiting the Zone, and none of them wanted to break it first.

…what a stupid thought.

She made her rounds, enjoyed the darkness, and waited to feel sleepier. When she thought she might be approaching that, she began to head home.

Beside her temple, there was a large, deep pit of formless ooze. It wasn’t precisely the _source_ of her power, more like a physical manifestation of such. Though even that wasn’t entirely accurate, as its levels could rise and ebb seemingly at random, despite the fact that her power (back when she’d had it, anyway) would remain constant. All she was really sure of was her connection to her power (and, consequently, the Zone itself) was strongest in and around the pool.

Thanks to the angle at which she was returning, she ended up passing it. What she noticed upon doing so was perplexing.

Usually, the pit was overflowing. That was not the case tonight. This, as mentioned, wasn’t necessarily a cause for concern; it had dipped well beneath the rim of the pool before. Even then, however, its surface would remain within reach. Currently, Valina could have laid on her stomach, dangled her arm over the edge, strained her fingertips, and she still doubted she would have been able to touch the ooze’s surface.

She bent down and peered over the edge, trying to see if she could locate the cause for the pit’s drop in volume. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for, but to be fair everything _seemed_ normal. The level was just lower than usual.

She was somehow much more tired than when she had first arrived at her temple and yet wide awake. She shook herself off best she could, and resolved to brainstorm possible causes for the anomaly in the morning. (She wasn’t able to come up with any viable explanations.)

The second month of summer ended in silence.


	4. Third Month

“You need to relax more,” Valina said, “and not think so much.” The hand she held in front of her suddenly elongated, claws melding together until the appendage had become a razor-sharp sword. “Let your body fill the spaces it knows it’s missing.”

Mandarin threw her a sour look, the bulbous claw at the end of his arm remaining very claw-like. “And your body thinks your hand used to be a sword, does it?”

She smirked, swishing it threw the air a few times for show. “Once you get the basics down we’ll move on to the fancier bits, but you need to do this first. Now try again.”

Mandarin was clearly not particularly comfortable in a student role. His mood during the entire endeavor had been three shades darker than usual. Or perhaps, he wasn’t particularly comfortable with being a _subpar_ student, as they’d been at it for a while and had made little progress. Frustration and embarrassment were evident in everything from his tone of voice to his posture.

“What makes you think this is even something I’m capable of doing?” he finally burst, fed up, after a few sustained seconds where he’d clearly tried for _something_ to no avail. “Perhaps the master neglected to program this capability into me upon creation.”

“How did you get that claw in the first place if it didn’t reform after it was cut off?” she asked, placing one hand on her hip as the other shifted back to normal. “Did you think that came from your non-formless parts? You were copied from a _monkey_, Mandarin, not a _starfish!_”

Mandarin flushed. “Why did it form _this_,” he asked, waving the claw for emphasis, “rather than go back to a regular hand?” Then, more forcefully, “Why did it form on its own then, but not now? Why can’t _I_ change it now?”

“Do non-formless creatures have to think about it to make blood clot and close their wounds?” she asked in return. “You were injured, and your body responded accordingly. You’ll notice if you get injured in other areas, they close up much faster than they would for other beings. It formed a _claw_ rather than a _hand _because of your mental and emotional state at the time.” She tilted her head, contemplating. “I’m not sure if it intentionally formed a weapon because you felt on some level that’s what you needed, or if it had been _trying_ to form a hand, but because of your distress it came out twisted. Anyway, this is also likely why you can’t change it at will now. You’re putting up to many mental blocks. This is why I keep telling you to _relax._”

“I have _never_ relaxed once in my _life_,” Mandarin bit out, offended, “and I will not be starting now!”

Valina rolled her eyes at his melodrama (and most definitely did not smile). “That explains a fair deal about you, to be honest,” she said under her breath.

“What was that?” he snapped, perking.

“Nothing, oh nothing. Anyway, humor me, will you?”

He looked back at his claw, visibly hesitant (she begrudgingly admitted to feeling slightly bad for him), before looking back to her. “How do you know about all this, anyway?”

He was stalling, but fine. “Where do you think _my_ formless came from? I had to learn how they worked as I created them.”

“Wait,” Mandarin said, blinking, “_you_ made the formless that had been in your temple?”

“Again: where did you _think_ they came from?”

“I thought they were regular formless that you’d been given when you were sent here.”

Valina scoffed. “I was given _nothing_ when I was sent here. Everything I have now is what I was able to make for myself or cram into a suitcase. And please, _regular _formless? They look completely different, Monkey.”

“I thought they’d _adapted!_” he said exasperatedly.

She actually laughed at this. It probably came off as more deriding than she’d meant it, but she was new at this and she did mean it to be a _little _deriding, so oh well.

There was another small pause, after which Mandarin said quietly, “Witch, how is it—? That is, do you know how you became a…? Why you’re…?” He gestured at her shortly, before weakly finishing, “…a formless?”

He seemed to think it was a more sensitive topic for her than it was. The “becoming a formless” –bit didn’t bother her, it was the event proceeding it. Still, trying to approach the topic gently was a remarkable (if clumsy) display of tact for him, so rather than inform him of the above she simply set about answering his question, lest she discourage him.

“My power – and by extension, my _spirit_ – is linked to this place,” she said, gesturing at the surrounding area, “so this is where it returned when I was destroyed. Since I didn’t have a body for my spirit to return _to_, one was fashioned for me,” she gestured, half-joking, at herself now, “and I woke up at what felt like the _bottom_ of the ooze pool outside.”

“Ah,” he said.

“Alright, now you.” She gestured a third time, at Mandarin now. “I thought I remembered seeing that—” vague waving at his claw— “get shattered. It looks very intact to me. I’m assuming that reformed sometime after…?”

Mandarin fidgeted, looking strangely uncomfortable. “Actually… the master fixed it. Just before the war started. He took hold of the arm and it just… grew back.”

“…I see,” she said. Then after a moment’s consideration, “It’s a shame you didn’t ask him what he’d done or how he did it. You might not have needed to put up with my attempts at teaching had you done so.”

“You’re a decent teacher,” he grumbled, as though hoping that if he said it quickly enough in a low enough voice it wouldn’t count.

She smiled, feeling strangely endeared, and without much thought reached over to rub his head demonstratively.

His expression looked wrong all of a sudden. For him, at least. Mandarin would typically go out of his way to hide vulnerability, so why was he now wearing it so openly on his face?

Rapidly becoming concerned she’d just triggered something, she rested her hand on his cheek, trying to get him to focus, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

It still took him a moment to properly answer, and when he did it was a soft, “…this doesn’t hurt…”

She was about to ask him if he had expected it to when he suddenly placed his hand on top of hers and turned his face into her palm, like a cat wanting attention. She was taken momentarily off-guard by the sudden, almost _desperate_ bid for affection, but found it didn’t last long. She’d been there. She understood. She gently stroked his cheek with her thumb, and he closed his eyes.

There was something building in her chest. How long had it been since she’d had a chance to touch something this gently? Or have it touch her back? She found she couldn’t remember. Nor could she remember the last time she’d felt this much warmth for another sentient creature. Not reverence, not loyalty; actual, genuine fondness. It was a bit remarkable how nice it felt.

On a whim she kneeled further and leaned in, giving him a soft peck on the nose.

As she pulled back, his expression genuinely made her laugh; it was somewhere between shocked and mystified and confused.

“Your face is red,” she purred.

“I had half of it burnt off, Witch, what color do you want it to be?”

“Oh, but it’s the part that _isn’t _burned that’s changing colors, Monkey.” Then, before he could respond, “You’re _smiling_.”

He was. It was large and unmissable. He plainly doing his best to smother it, and he was failing miserably.

“I am _not_,” he said through the smile, trying to avoid eye-contact.

“You _are_,” she crowed, shoving at him playfully. “Aww, was that your first kiss, Monkey? How _cute!_”

He’d taken to covering his face as best he could with only one hand and a giant claw. “_You can stop whenever you like, you know.”_

She was still grinning vindictively when she paused to consider. “Although I suppose that wasn’t even technically a _kiss; _more of a peck really.” She gave him another smirk. “Imagine how hard you’d fall apart if I’d _actually_ kissed you!”

“I’m _leaving_,” he said forcefully and a bit frantically, turning to exit the room. Still cackling, she trailed behind him. When he turned to say something to her (probably to stop following him or something stupid like that), she took the opportunity to sweep him up into her arms. The action pulled out a nervous (if reluctantly pleased) laugh from him, so she gave yet another of her own before gently, briefly pressing their foreheads together.

“You’re still _burning_ red_,_” she whispered directly into his ear.

“_Shut up, _Witch,” he hissed, now trying to hide both a smile and shiver.

* * *

Valina was falling.

She and Mandarin had ventured to the very top of her temple, mostly just for something to do. She’d described the view as being not terrible, and he’d been interested. Somehow (despite not having been able to do so for literal _years_ by this point) she’d forgotten she was no longer able to float or levitate, gotten too close to the edge, and fallen off.

To be fair_,_ she thought to herself as she descended, she hadn’t been up to the top of her temple _since_ she’d had magic. She blamed this on a sort of muscle memory rather than her simply being an idiot.

Her thoughts were coming in quick, panicked bursts the closer she got to the ground. Would she survive this? Would being a formless be enough to prevent life-ending injury? Would it _hurt_—?

The reason falling from a great height _hurt _was because of the force of impact. Absorb the force, the impact wouldn’t hurt.

She let every single part of her, right down to the very fibers of her being, go completely and utterly slack mere seconds before she hit the ground.

Mandarin, still at the top of the temple, watched Valina hit the ground and _splat_ into an indistinguishable puddle.

He knew he was making sounds, but he couldn’t have actually said what any of them were. He suspected he’d said her name quite a lot. Distantly, he was very glad he was a monkey – and therefore didn’t need to bother with taking stairs and things to leave the temple – to get to where Valina had fallen. He could take the most direct route and just go down the side of the temple’s wall.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see as he got down to where she’d landed; he’d seen her become absolutely liquefied, that wasn’t something that looked better up close. He was on the brink of having an emotional breakdown when he heard a gurgled “_guuuuggglllllhhhhhhh_…” rise up from the puddle. He was in the process of frantically weighing the merits of finding a bucket or something to scoop the remains into when the puddle gradually started to become less puddle-like. Slowly, the witch’s shape began to go back to looking humanoid, until she was eventually just as she’d been before she’d fallen, lying on her side. She gave another gurgling groan as her eyes flitted open.

“_Witch!_” he exclaimed, moving forward sharply to— well, _embracing_ her had been his first instinct, embarrassing as that was, but upon reflection he wasn’t entirely sure if she’d been injured, so perhaps it would be best not to jostle her just yet. He pulled up just short of her.

“Witch, what’s your name?” he asked evenly as he could. He had absolutely no idea if _splattering _counted as a flesh wound or a head injury considering literally all of her had been affected. If it even constituted as an injury at all; she looked fine, for what it was worth. Regardless, he was covering his bases and treating it as both.

She looked at him blearily. “Vallllina,” she slurred.

“Good. When were you born?”

“Thhe 297th day of the year.”

The witch’s birthday was actually a fact he’d only just learned recently, but the circumstances (and lack of further questions he could ask to verify her well-being) made him quietly resolve to learn more when he could.

“Well done. Do you hurt anywhere?”

“Yes,” she said. Then, belatedly, after a pause, “All. Er, all of the above. It all hurts.” As Mandarin resisted the overwhelming urge to point out she’d just fallen multiple stories and her entire self had been reduced to _mush_, so _no surprise_ all of her hurt, she groaned, “That wasn’ fun.”

Once again: reduced to_ mush_. “I don’t imagine it was.”

“’M not dead though.”

“Eh, we could probably argue the semantics on that for a while, but we’ll save that for later. Can you move?”

She hesitated, then slowly, falteringly pushed herself up to her feet, where she wobbled dangerously.

“Ev’rything’s moving,” she said slowly, closing her eyes in distaste and dizziness.

“It’s likely going to do that for a while, Witch, let’s just try to make it to your bed.”

Valina woke up some time later feeling… not _completely_ horrible, all things considered, just exceedingly woozy and rather sore. As she tried to push herself up, a voice beside her piped up “You should stay down.”

She blinked (her vision was still swimming), but even through hazy double images she could make out Mandarin sitting next to her.

“Everything’s still _spinning_,” she complained (though was proud to note that she wasn’t slurring all _that_ badly).

“Yes, that’s why you should _stay down_,” he said exasperatedly. “_Honestly_ Witch.”

She haltingly acquiesced, letting herself fall back down onto her bed, burying her face in her pillow.

“You know Witch,” Mandarin began somewhere above her, and there was a nauseating note of smugness in his voice, “I hadn’t realized you were quite so _clumsy_.”

She made a sound indicating not to go there.

He continued blithely forward regardless. “I mean to say, you didn’t even _hesitate_. You just went right over the edge.”

“_Mandarin,_” she growled warningly.

“Do me a kindness and don’t go up there on your own, will you?” he asked, sounding infuriatingly pleased. “Or at least give me time to put up a rail first.”

She was about to sit back up to tell him off (or maybe smother him with her pillow, she hadn’t decided yet) when she felt something trailing through her hair.

Well, such as it was, anyway. It wasn’t long or black like it had once been, but she (and the formless her body had molded itself after) still had _some._

“You looked absolutely _horrendous_ splattered across the ground like that,” Mandarin sniggered, still softly twining his claws through dark strands. “Truly, I’m embarrassed for you.”

“Out of morbid curiosity,” she grumbled, irritation somehow both dissipated and still simmering all at once, “how long can I expect you to continually reference this?”

“For as long as I’m capable of speech,” he said cheerfully.

“I’m cutting out your tongue the second the room stops moving.”

He snickered again, still playing with her hair.

Perhaps a minute or so passed (wherein she nearly fell back asleep) when she heard him ask, “Do you need anything, since I’m here?”

After a moment’s consideration, she mumbled, “Quilt.”

He hopped off the bed and helped wrangle it out from underneath her without her having to do much more than shift a bit. As he was replacing it on top of her, she mumbled into her pillow (as the room was still whirring and she didn’t want to look at it), “Make dinner when it gets to be around that time.”

“Very well, Witch. Get some rest now. Do try not to fall off the bed.”

“I’ll cut it clean out of your head Mandarin, I swear I will.”

He cackled.

* * *

Mandarin couldn’t see much outside of Valina’s window; it was too dark. Perhaps if he got close and pressed his face against it he’d be able to see more, but presently he was too comfortable to bother.

Valina had her arm thrown around him, and they were laying so that his back was pressed to her chest. She claimed that he got clingy in his sleep (which Mandarin emphatically denied, because he did _not_), so she was saving herself some time and twisted sheets by just taking hold of him from the start.

A likely story. Still, since she’d apparently gone to the trouble to concoct it in the first place, he supposed he could play along. No real need to call her bluff.

Valina shifted in her sleep, hugging tighter, and Mandarin hummed softly, pleased.

He was halfway close to sleep himself. Their arrangement had initially come about after they both accidentally fell asleep whilst talking, and upon waking realized that their respective nightmares had left them alone. After a few more test runs, they determined that it did indeed have to do with the other being present.

Mandarin found the process of falling asleep was much gentler and natural with Valina around, too. It was rather violently juxtaposed with before, when it had been a frustrating struggle to bully himself into unconsciousness (and into the jaws of whatever nightmares his subconscious was cooking up) in the name of his personal health.

As he drifted further from consciousness he found himself taking slow inventory of his life thus far (well, his _recent_ life thus far; he tried not to think about much of the earlier bits). In particular, he seemed to settle on the memory of the witch attempting to teach him how to reform. Shame that hadn’t worked out. _Just relax, don’t think too much, let your body fill in the parts it knows it’s missing._

He was relaxed _now_, he reasoned, and hardly thinking at all. Maybe it would work better this time.

Practically asleep and neither expecting results nor particularly minding a lack of them, Mandarin willed his claw to be a hand again.

Valina was brutally ripped from sleep by the sound of Mandarin screaming for her.

She wasn’t entirely sure she still had a _heart_, so to speak, but whatever it was that kept the dark ooze circulating through her body kicked into overtime. She had thrown herself into a half sitting position, frantically looking around the room for whatever had caused Mandarin’s distress. Finding nothing, she then immediately worked herself into an overpowering, split-second panic that something had happened to _him_. Looking down to her side, however, she found him crouched beside her, wide-eyed and unscathed and very awake.

She exhaled, feeling a body that probably didn’t even have bones anymore further jellify. He wasn’t hurt.

…he _wasn’t_ hurt?

Irritation finally caught up to her, so she seized her pillow and began violently hitting him with it.

“Do – not – scream – like – that – you – _idiot!!_” she said, punctuating each word with a smack of her pillow. “You nearly scared me half to death!!”

Mandarin flailed at her impatiently to fend her off. “You’ve hit _full_ death and been _fine _Witch, calm down!”

Before she could raise her pillow again to reiterate that, regardless, she still did _not_ appreciate being woken up that way, he waved his hand in her face and practically squealed, “Look!!”

She was at first nonplussed and annoyed, wondering what she could _possibly _be supposed to be looking at, but then she realized: It was his _left_ hand he was showing her. For as long as she’d known him, he had only had a right.

“I did it!” he said, beaming.

Taking hold of it (both to inspect the new appendage and to make him stop flailing it around), she asked, “_When_ exactly did you do this?”

“Just now!” he said, practically vibrating (and upon reflection that seemed obvious, but Valina was still very tired and not entirely awake). “I was nearly asleep when I decided to try, and it worked!”

She let go of his hand. “We spent all that time working on this and all you needed was to be half-_asleep?_”

“Evidently so,” he said cheerfully, now holding both hands out in front of him and flexing the fingers of each. The left still seemed inclined to follow the simple pinching and grabbing motions of his previous claw, but that appeared to be more to do with muscle memory than it did with dexterity.

“I can open twist-top bottles again!” he said, sounding delighted.

She adjusted herself so one knee was up, elbow resting on it to hold her head, observing him. “Was this a large part of your life you’d been missing out on?”

“No, but I like knowing I have the option.”

…the vile little worm was being too adorable to stay upset with, despite her having absolutely every right to be so. The utter nerve of him.

She sighed. “Well, congratulations, Simian. Nicely done.”

He looked up at her, and his smile was so _big_ she was a little surprised. She could understand being pleased with finally mastering an ability that had been previously causing problems (it was one of the best feelings in the world, in her opinion) but this seemed… intense.

“If I’d known having the ability to open twist-tops would bring you this much joy,” she began slowly, half-joking, “I would have worked harder with you on this.”

Something faltered in his expression. “That’s… a _perk_, assuredly, but…” he shifted in a way that was two steps away from uncomfortable. “I did _like_ that claw, but whenever I’d look at it I would inevitably think about…” he cleared his throat, “how I got it.” He looked at his new hand again, and she didn’t need him to further fill in the blanks.

She was about to say something when his expression suddenly got very serious, as though he’d made up his mind about something. He turned to her shortly.

“Witch,” he began, “I wouldn’t have known I had the power to do this had you not told me. And even if I had, I likely still wouldn’t have actually been able to do so without your instruction. So—” He paused, as if mentally bracing himself for something. “So…”

He abruptly stood up on the bed. With her still sitting as she was, they were almost eye to eye. Without further ceremony, he quickly kissed her on the cheek.

“…thank you,” he finished firmly. Then he retreated slightly, sinking back down to the mattress, trying to gauge her reaction.

She couldn’t manage much of one for a second. Mandarin, as she was familiar with him, was not exceptionally forthcoming with affection. There were signs, however much he tried to bury them, that it was indeed his inclination, but he almost never acted on it unless he had a backdoor-excuse he could scuttle out of. But look at him now: no scuttling in sight.

The smile that was working its way onto her face wasn’t exactly _dignified_, but what could you do.

He looked pleased with this. _Smug_, almost. It took her a second to work out why, but then she realized _oh_, he thought he’d gotten even from when she kissed him.

Well, that joke was entirely on him. Valina was perfectly secure in her ability to be a strong, independent creature of unholy nightmares, and no amount of affection – received or distributed – was going to change that anytime soon. She was more than happy to unabashedly revel in this.

As such, for the time being, she settled for grinning like an idiot.

* * *

Valina slid into the clearing, cackling in victory.

“I _won!_” she jeered shrilly as Mandarin slid in after her in hot pursuit, jabbing her finger at him. “I won I won _I won!_”

“Your legs are three miles long!” he whined. “Hardly a fair victory!”

Valina cackled again, practically bouncing on her heels. “No one likes a sore loser_,_ Monkey,” she chided mockingly.

“Sore _winners _hardly fare any better, Witch!” he shot back, sulking.

“It’s your own fault,” she intoned sweetly. “_You’re_ the one that suggested a race against an opponent with skills clearly _vastly _superior to your own.”

“_‘Superior’?!_” he squawked. “What pray tell brings you to _that_ nonsensical conclusion?!”

“I’m simply better adapted for running,” she said smugly, turning away from him. “‘Three mile long legs,’ as you put it.”

“Oh really…?” She felt something land suddenly on her back, claws poking and pinching whatever they could reach. “Then why is it when we first worked together _I _was made to do all the legwork?!”

Valina reached up and began tweaking and pulling by way of counterattack. “Because I didn’t _feel _like it!” she taunted. “I said ‘better adapted’ not ‘more inclined’!”

Their pseudo-scuffle continued for a bit until Mandarin froze mid-noogie to stare off into the distance.

This, unsurprisingly, caught Valina’s attention. “…Mandarin?”

He was looking around at the surrounding foliage slowly, eyes wide. “Witch I…” He looked around briefly once more before slowly sinking down onto her shoulder. “Witch, I don’t like this. We need to leave.”

She blinked, alarmed. “You don’t like _what?_”

“Something feels wrong,” he said, sliding down to cling to her back. “Valina, please, we need to _leave_.”

She still didn’t understand, but decided against trying to calm him down or convince him everything was fine. She just started moving. She could calm him down once they got back home; it would be easier to convince him everything was fine when they were securely behind the temple walls.

But then as she walked, she started to understand what had Mandarin so jumpy. The Zone, as she’d noticed previously, was silent. But before that had only extended towards the wildlife; now, there was literally, absolutely, zero sound. No air. No trees creaking. No underbrush rustling. All that could be heard where the steps Valina was taking to bring them back to the temple. She felt a pit form in her stomach.

Now that she’d noticed, she didn’t like it either.

Mandarin’s grip on her shoulders suddenly tightened, which – senses on high-alert as they were – made her jump. She faltered to a stop, looking back at him, and was just about to ask him what was wrong when she saw him staring fixedly into the trees off to their left.

“What is it?” she asked in a hushed voice. She felt silly to whisper (or perhaps she was too afraid to admit she _needed to_ yet), but the quiet surrounding them was too oppressive to speak in a normal tone.

“Something moved,” he said, and he _was_ whispering. Then, in a voice heavy with dread, “I think we’re being stalked.”

Valina’s thoughts started moving very fast. On the one hand, Mandarin had spent enough time in a hostile environment to know what being stalked felt like. He was probably something of an authority at this point. But on the other, that experience had clearly left its mark on him; was he just stressed and his mind – already being dragged back to that trauma – was producing imaginary dangers as a result? Silent or not the Zone was still a jungle, something _moving_ in it wasn’t that unusual or necessarily a cause of concern. Or was she simply in denial?

She began walking again, trying to go faster yet be quieter all at once. More than anything she wished she still had the ability to teleport. She was about to ask him what specifically made him feel they were being _stalked_, when she saw it too.

To the left ahead of them, just beyond where she could make out details, something hulking shifted in the trees. The pit in her stomach grew worse.

It looked… _big_. Valina was confident in her ability to handle the local fauna of the Zone, but without magic there were unfortunately some fights she knew she couldn’t win.

She altered her course abruptly, dipping through some trees. The way they were headed would lead them smack into the thing, which further fostered the impression that it was after them in some way. The thought that it could have enough intelligence to head them off and then _wait_ for them to walk into it was immensely troubling.

The thing that really got to her, though, the thing that _truly_ unsettled her, was that regardless of its apparent size, it had still neglected to make a single sound as it moved. So it was by some extrasensory inclination rather than sight or sound that made her slowly break into a run, dodging through and around trees, trying to decrease her own visibility.

She could feel it behind them.

Randomly pulling up short and ducking behind a particularly wide trunk, she dug her claws into the bark and scrambled to the top, hiding them amongst the foliage. Mandarin shifted so he was attached to her front, and they waited, holding their breath.

Five seconds… Ten seconds… Fifteen seconds…

The _thing _that crept through the underbrush was bigger than Valina had ever expected, long and wide, utterly massive. It just wasn’t _tall, _and so could hide in the undergrowth.

Its skin was the same inky black as her own, but it didn’t have a head she could make out. For the most part, its general shape resembled a giant leech, and she could feel Mandarin only just _barely_ stop himself from having a very visceral reaction to it. _Un_like a leech, the thing had… _appendages. _That was really the only word Valina could think of for them, because they didn’t qualify as strictly arms or legs. It was propelled forward by multiple “legs,” almost like a centipede, but each “leg” very distinctly had a _hand_ and the end. It was somehow even more disconcerting to _watch_ it move and yet still not _hear_ it. It had wings, mismatched and of different sizes all along its back, and Valina couldn’t imagine it could actually use them for flight. There were long, almost spider-like legs littering its back as well, interspersed irregularly between the wings. 

The sight of the thing wasn’t the worst of it though.

The worst was when it _spoke_.

“_Know you’re there,_” it rasped, and the sudden cut through the silence was nearly enough to make them jump. Its voice was _horrible_. It really only just barely counted _as_ a voice; largely because it seemed to be made up mostly of a cacophony of differing noises, all guttural and shrieking and gurgling at once.

But under that… beneath the discordance being inexplicably used to speak with… there _was_ one, true, genuine voice.

Their former master, even in true death, still had ways of haunting them, it would seem.

“_Hear your breath,”_ it went on (Valina instinctively pressed her hand over their mouth and nose; Mandarin had already done so at the mere sight of the thing), “_smell your fear._”

It lingered for a moment, swaying its front from side to side like it was looking around, then pressed forward (_silently, _why was it so _silent?!), _eventually disappearing into the trees.

They were silent for another minute, waiting to make sure it didn’t come back. When it didn’t, their respective tenseness dissipated somewhat. Only somewhat.

“What was _that?!”_ Mandarin asked in a harsh, near frantic whisper. “Is that thing something _normal_ to these parts?!”

“No,” Valina said distantly, mind whirring. “It’s not.”

“Then— then what—?”

“It was a formless,” she supplied quietly.

“I’ve _never_ seen a formless like—”

“I think that’s because it was _all of them_.”

Mandarin fell silent, looking confused and horrified.

“I haven’t seen a single formless besides the pair of us since the beginning of summer,” she went on, partly to herself, trying to make the pieces fit inside her head. “And the rest of the non-formless animals have been too quiet. If they knew… If they_ saw _that thing forming…”

She was struck, suddenly, by the memory of the ooze pool outside her temple, and how empty it had been. Had it… had it been _siphoning_ ooze from there? For what purpose?

“How?” Mandarin asked weakly, none the wiser to this final puzzle piece. “_Why?_”

Valina swallowed. “The formless of the Zone are by and large completely mindless, and without specific directions they operate under a mantra of eat, sleep, destroy. Perhaps without a master to think for them or _exist _to keep them stable they went haywire and merged together.” She gave a rueful, desperate laugh. “Perhaps this is some sort of failsafe Skeleton King programmed into them should he be permanently defeated, _I don’t know_. But I’m almost positive that that _thing_ is an amalgamation of all the Zone’s formless.”

“If that thing is all the formless in the Zone,” Mandarin hissed, “and the resident formless are all _mindless_, then why could it _talk?_”

She paused, then shrugged helplessly, shaking her head.

Mandarin gave a laugh of his own, high and desperate and hushed. “_Fantastic_. And now it’s looking for us. What do we do?”

Valina chewed her lip, trying to think. They couldn’t fight it, that was immediately, horrifyingly obvious. It was likely too much to hope that if they managed to make it back to the temple it would simply leave them alone, and even if it _did,_ their food stock wouldn’t last forever. They’d need to come back out into the jungle to hunt, and the thought of constantly having to worry about _that_ thing sneaking up on them was nerve-wracking.

“I… I don’t…”

She was cut off by Mandarin giving a sharp gasp, and then suddenly the whole world was sent rocking. They were both sent tumbling out from the tree, and without time to destabilize Valina found the impact with the ground did indeed _hurt_.

Groaning, she forced herself to sit up looking around. Mandarin, it seemed, had landed flat on his back and gotten the wind knocked completely out of him. Just beyond him, was the massive, faceless formless.

It had snuck up on them, if it had ever really left. She had the sudden, nauseating feeling it had moved just out of sight long enough for them to start talking so it could pinpoint their hiding place.

Blood pounding in her ears, she made a desperate lunge for Mandarin – they had to go, they had to _run – _and was just short of him when he was violently jerked away, and she backwards from him.

Dark, slimy tendrils had secreted out from its mass, and now held them apart from each other, facing it. It tilted upwards, and they were able to see what they hadn’t had view of while sitting above it.

Its underside had a mouth, huge and round and gaping, with teeth spiraling inwards from the top, sides, and bottom, further strengthening the comparison to a leech. Deep in the back of its throat was a bulbous, staring, bloodshot eye.

As they stared at it in muted horror, it hissed, _“Join us.”_

_And the tendrils began to slowly retract back into its body_.

Valina felt herself scream more than she willed it, now struggling frantically, futilely. Mandarin, she saw out of the corner of her eye, was doing the same.

“What are you doing?!” he screeched, likely more out of panic than expecting an actual response. Which made it all the more surprising when he _got_ one.

“_We will become one,_” it rasped. _“Only then shall we possess sufficient power.”_

Valina couldn’t really tell if it speaking was causing much of a difference in regards to how quickly the tendrils withdrew, but since it definitely didn’t seem to be making them go _faster_ she decided to keep it going.

“Power for _what?” _she demanded, still struggling.

_“Destruction,_” it gurgled. _“Complete, utter annihilation of all that lives_.”

Not only did it share Skeleton King’s voice, it apparently shared his goals too. Super.

“Why were you siphoning ooze from the well outside my temple?” she pressed, grasping for topics blindly. She almost felt like it talking _was _slowing its retraction, if only slightly. Apparently it wasn’t skilled at multitasking.

(Mandarin made a startled, questioning sound across from her; she’d briefly forgotten she hadn’t mentioned that to him).

_“It was required to bind us together.”_

“Then why wait? If you were literally _right outside our door_, when didn’t you come for us then?”

“_We never approached the pool,_” it hissed. _“Our like calls to its like. We needn’t go to it, it comes when we beckon.”_

“That still doesn’t explain why you _waited,_” Mandarin barked, struggling to get his foot between his body and the tentacle holding him hostage to create leverage. Whether he was adopting her strategy of trying to keep it talking or simply wanted to know, she couldn’t say. But she used the time it was focused on him (she presumed, it wasn’t as though it had a face to go off of) to attempt to gain more purchase against it.

Something rippled through the massive formless unpleasantly, bringing their struggling to a momentary, hesitant stop.

“_Your **thoughts**,_” it hissed, making them both inadvertently flinch; up until then there had been a distinct quality of expressionlessness to its speech, but the word _thoughts _was spat like a curse, “_might have proved overwhelming. More power was needed to ensure complete assimilation. We had to gather a greater number to our ranks beforehand._”

Valina’s blood had run cold at the words ‘_complete assimilation._’ It had come for them _last_. It had spent the entire summer (perhaps even longer) absorbing the resident formless so the collective hive mind it had developed wouldn’t be overtaken by their stronger, already existing ones. And now, apparently, it felt secure in its ability to absorb and neutralize their respective consciousnesses.

This was worse than just _death_ they were facing, because they would still technically be alive. This was complete and utter _erasure_.

It went on, “_Your respective knowledge and power, once added to our own, will make us unstoppable._”

Valina heartily doubted that. Its creator hadn’t even managed to become “_unstoppable,_” and that had been with the might of the Dark Ones behind him. She didn’t suspect two more formless (though each exceptional in their own rights, and certainly outliers in the grand scheme of things), would be enough to tip the scales for this thing.

She was hardly inclined to tell _it _that though. She made a point of not intentionally antagonizing things that could (and moreover, were _prepped_) to completely eradicate her.

“You’re a _fool!_”

Mandarin, it would seem, continuously had no such compunctions. If she ever got the chance again, she was going to push him down some stairs for it.

“You wouldn’t get farther than the city limits! Skeleton King himself was defeated by the Hyperforce, and he was more powerful than you or either of us combined! They wouldn’t even need to strain themselves to deal with you!”

(Just because they were evidently on the exact same wavelength did _not_ make her any less annoyed with him, for the record.)

“_You know nothing,” _it said. _“And your continued attempts at self-preservation are unwarranted. Neither of you deserve the lives you currently possess to begin with.”_

Neither were expecting such a personal jab, and as such it came as a remarkably rude jolt.

It continued, “_We are not one with you, but we are connected to you by the master’s will. You do not feel our presence, because you have too many **thoughts**_**, **_but we feel yours, and we know your failures.” _The slimy tendrils wrapped further up their bodies, still slowly drawing them closer. Valina shuddered, and saw Mandarin frantically flailing his legs. _“What are you without your master? You are weak, unlovable frauds. You have no direction. You have no purpose. Join with us, assimilate, and become useful for once in either of your worthless lives. Or at least,”_ the tendrils tightened, coming a hair’s breadth away from painful, “_you could put an end to your shameful existences._”

There was something burning in Valina’s chest, spreading to the rest of her extremities. Its words, like Mandarin’s months prior, were hitting a bit too close. But unlike Mandarin’s, these words didn’t feel like a knife in the heart. They didn’t make her sad.

They made her _furious._

But then, she laughed.

It was loud and drew both Mandarin’s and the massive formless’s attention. She calmed, looked at it dead on, and said, “Neither of our lives are worthless.”

And then her claws, now elongated and melded together, becoming a razor-sharp sword, swung up and out of the tendril that had previously held her aloft and kept her arms pinned to her sides. A trail of black ooze trailed behind the sword’s arc.

The thing let out a horrible pained roar, the grip holding her falling limp. Valina grabbed hold of the still outstretched tentacle, swung up, and after briefly using it as a perch leapt over to the one still holding Mandarin before stabbing it as well. Valina yanked him out of its slackening grip, then leapt over to the nearest tree, looking for cover.

Her landing wasn’t great, and once again Mandarin bounced out of her arms, but he caught himself well enough, hauling himself into the branches as well. There wasn’t much time to recoup, though, and they _knew _that, so without thinking they both blindly launched themselves out of the tree and over to the next one, and then the next.

Valina chanced a glance behind her, and was exhilarated to see that, while the formless was keeping pace, the web work of trees was keeping it from gaining on them. Though it could have easily overtaken them on the ground, its size was forcing it to weave through and around the greenery, regardless of it crashing through what it could.

It’s sharp, uncoordinated movements indicated rage of the highest caliber, though. Valina quickly turned her attention back forward.

“What now?!” Mandarin called over the crashing of trees and brush and leaves.

She was about to say (rather helplessly) she didn’t know, when thought occurred to her. Having nothing better, she decided to go with it.

“Mandarin we need to get back to the temple.”

“Witch, it’s not a _fortress_, that thing could easily get into—”

“_Trust me,_” she said, tone a mix between demanding and pleading.

Mandarin looked at her, visibly concerned, and after a moment, nodded.

They redoubled their efforts and took off towards the temple, the thing crashing and flailing behind them.

The trees, though quite close to the temple, were not flush with it. This meant that there would be a space where they’d have to just _run_. They half climbed, half fell down the final tree, and then Valina took firm hold of Mandarin’s arm, jerking him behind her as she ran.

The formless broke through the trees with a crash and a deafening, discordant roar. Valina willed her legs to move faster as she sprinted along the perimeter of the temple.

Without the trees and brush needing to be knocked out of its way, it had once again reverted to absolute silence as moved. But she could hear it wheezing and hissing, its breath hot and putrid on their backs, _it was right behind them—_

She came to the edge of the ooze well and with one foot braced against the very rim, she jumped over it, her and Mandarin landing just feet apart on the other side. The formless cleared the pool easily, lunging at them like something out of a nightmare, every awful appendage on its body reaching, _straining_ for them, it’s horrible mouth wide, the eye in its throat bulging—

It stopped, hanging suspended over the now nearly empty pit.

Valina’s connection to her former power _and the Zone itself_ was strongest in and around the pool. That included the Zone’s formless.

And she felt it was about time _this_ formless returned the ooze it had siphoned.

Slowly, the formless began to descend into the (now nearly empty) pool. Its form began to loosen, its wings and legs and hands slowly melting to slide liquid-like into the waiting abyss beneath it. It thrashed and flailed, screaming all the while as it tried to escape, but its efforts amounted to nothing. It was caught, and this was the end.

They slowly, hesitantly, started to relax.

Mandarin shrieked suddenly, and even with split-second reflexes she only just barely managed to catch him as he was jerked backwards. There was a tendril of ooze wrapped around his left wrist, dragging him furiously towards the pool of ooze.

_“You will join us,” _it hissed, voice distorted and so loud it felt like it was booming out from within her head. “_You will share our fate.”_

Even as pieces of it were being sucked back into the pool, its grip on Mandarin didn’t waver no matter how much she tugged and ripped at its tendril. It was all she could do to even remain on the ground. Clinging desperately to Mandarin as she was, she was being dragged towards the hideous, spitting whirlpool in front of them as well.

Sputtering and hissing, it roared, “_You shall **die** with us_.”

And then Mandarin looked at it, the expression of pure, utter defiance that she’d become so very acquainted with burning itself across his face, and snarled, “Want to _bet?_”

She felt him go momentarily limp in her arms, and then watched his left arm crumble to nothing within the tendril’s grip.

The tendril snapped back to its owner violently, sending her jerking back so hard she almost cracked her head on the ground. As she scrambled to get up, or at least _away_, she heard the thing scream in abject rage behind her. It was chilling and unnatural; there were far too many sounds to have come from a single entity. She felt more tendrils swipe and snap at where they’d been, but, feet now back underneath her, she was moving just a bit too fast to catch.

Something suddenly struck her in the back. Perhaps it had been meant as a grab but hadn’t been aimed properly, but regardless it was enough to knock her off balance. She went slamming down to the ground, landing on her side, and Mandarin tumbled out of her arms.

Her head whipped around to the pool. It remained visible above it, but that was changing. It’s screams where distorted and animalistic, somewhere between a creature caught in a trap and something… _aware_. Something _angry._

The screaming died down as it was swiftly dragged into the pool, until all that was left was a vicious gurgling sound. Soon, there wasn’t even that anymore.

There was a moment where she lay, half-upright on the ground, waiting to see if it would rear back up again. Somehow, though, she could already feel it wouldn’t.

When enough time passed without anything else happening, Valina began furiously scanning the area for Mandarin. She saw him a few feet away, looking shaken and lost.

She dove at him, crashing to her knees to scoop him up into a hug. He returned the hug ferociously, wrapping his remaining arm, legs, and tail around her as tightly as he could manage without causing actual pain, and burying his face in the crook of her neck. She followed his lead, clinging to him like he might float off if she didn’t keep a strong enough hold on him.

He pulled back slightly, looked like he wanted to say something, and seeing his face in full filled her with a profound sense of…

Oh, the Abyss take it: With _love_. His awful, asymmetrical face made her happy and she was relieved beyond words that she would have other chances to see it, because through some deplorable error she loved this absolutely horrid excuse for a simian. It was disgustingly, _pathetically_ sentimental, and she didn’t particularly care.

She leaned in and placed her mouth over his before he could speak.

She’d been quite right in her assumption that _actually_ kissing him would make him completely _melt_.

When they pulled apart Mandarin somehow looked even happier than when he’d first reformed his hand, as well as dazed and dreamy. What an idiot. He was _such _an idiot. A loud, arrogant, emotional _mess _of an idiot. Her eyes were stinging. This utter idiot came _this_ close to being killed, but he hadn’t. He was still here with her.

She wondered if Mandarin was thinking along the same lines as she was, because he suddenly shoved his face back into the space between her shoulder and neck, clinging tighter, making sounds somewhere in the middle of laughter and sobbing.

Tears pouring from her eyes, curling around him, she laughed too. Hysterically and hard.

They calmed slowly, though their “calm” was really only so in comparison to their frantic expulsion of emotions just seconds prior.

“A-are you— are you alright?” she asked shakily, trying to get her breath back.

“I’m not injured,” he said thickly, voice quaking almost worse than hers. “I mean, I don’t— this is—” he waved the stump of his left arm vaguely. It stopped just above where his elbow would have been.

“We’ll get it taken care of,” she soothed. “You’ve done it before, it’ll be alright.”

“Right,” he said, sounding almost relieved. Perhaps it simply helped to hear someone else say it. “I know. It’s just—”

Once more, “it’ll be alright.” Then she gently rubbed his head. “I’m proud of you, by the way. That was impressive.”

He smiled, taking the opportunity to nuzzle against her shoulder. She smiled back, hugging him again.

Distantly (and they both jumped at the sound) there was a crash of thunder, and looking up they saw a darkening sky rapidly approaching.

Summer was over, it would seem.

She secured her grip, stood, and moved to go back into their temple before they got drenched.

Good. It was the worst time of the year as far as she was concerned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy SHIT this felt good to get out. None of you realize - no, listen, listen - NONE of you realize how long I've wanted to write something like this. This ship has been my OTP of OTPs since I was thirteen-goddamn-years-old. I've written things with both Mandarin and Valina in it together - hell, I've even written them getting along - but this is THE FIRST TIME I've ever actually managed to write something coherent with actual shipping overtones to it. Where they actually get TOGETHER. 
> 
> Just- YEAH BABY WOO who wants a hug?!


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